反思土耳其军事政变为什么会失败

Turkey Was an Unlikely Victim of an Equally Unlikely Coup

土耳其军事政变为何失败？

If the attempted coup in Turkey came as a surprise, there was good reason: The event went against decades of research on how, when and why coups happen.

如果说土耳其的未遂政变出乎人们的意料，这是有很好的理由的：数十年来，有着各种关于政变如何发生、何时发生、以及为什么发生的研究，这一事件不符合其中任何一项。

Friday night’s uprising appeared to diverge wildly from the usual patterns. And political scientists who study coups say Turkey should have been at little risk.

周五晚上的政变似乎与通常的模式极为不同。研究政变的政治学者们说，土耳其本该几乎没有政变的风险。

Secretary of State John Kerry, reiterating support for Turkey’s government, expressed the bafflement felt by many observers.

国务卿约翰·克里重申了美国对土耳其政府的支持，同时也表达了许多观察家所感到的困惑。

“It surprised everybody, including the people in Turkey,” Mr. Kerry said, adding, “I must say it does not appear to be a very brilliantly planned or executed event.”

“这出乎所有人的意料，包括土耳其人民，”克里说，并补充道，“我要说的是，这是一次看来没有出色计划或实施的事件。”

The gap between Turkey’s insurrection and other coups helps explain why the attempt failed. But it also underscores how many basic questions remain unanswered.

土耳其的政变与其他政变的不同有助于解释为什么它失败了。但同时也凸显了有多少基本问题仍未得到解答。

Not the kind of country at risk

并非高风险国家

Coups are usually driven not solely by individual plotters, but also by structural factors. Political scientists, by tracking factors like economic trends, political freedoms and public health, have identified several predictive patterns.

推动政变的不单是个体策划者，也有结构性的因素。政治学者通过跟踪比如经济发展趋势、政治自由度和公众健康等因素，已经建立了几种可预测的政变模式。

Jay Ulfelder, who works in the area of political forecasting, has developed a mathematical model that synthesizes this data to predict a country’s level of risk.

在政治预测领域工作的杰伊·乌菲耳德(Jay Ulfelder)开发了一个数学模型，这个模型将数据综合起来，预测国家发生政变的风险水平。

Turkey, said Mr. Ulfelder’s research, done in conjunction with the Early Warning Project, was a “very unlikely” candidate for a coup, he said in an email. It had only a 2.5 percent probability of an attempted coup, based on 2016 data. That placed it 56th out of 160 countries, between Laos and Iran, and was within a range considered stable. At-risk countries tend to have high rates of infant mortality, a common measurement of poverty, and poorly performing economies. Turkey’s economy has been growing, and infant mortality has been rapidly declining.

乌菲耳德在一封电子邮件中说，他的研究是与“预先警报项目”(Early Warning Project)一起进行的，其结果表明，土耳其“非常不可能”出现政变。基于2016年的数据，土耳其发生未遂政变的概率只有2.5％。这让土耳其的风险程度在160个国家中排名第56，位于老挝和伊朗之间，处于被认为是稳定的范围内。高风险的国家往往有高婴儿死亡率和表现不佳的经济，婴儿死亡率是测量贫穷的常用参数。土耳其的经济一直在增长，婴儿死亡率则一直在迅速下降。

Mr. Ulfelder has also found that a country is less likely to face a coup when there is armed conflict in nearby states, perhaps because of a rally-around-the-flag effect.

乌菲耳德还发现，一个国家周边的国家发生武装冲突时，也许对这个国家有一种需要团结在一起的影响，所以该国不太可能面临政变。

While Turkey has a history of coups, the country has changed considerably since its last, in 1997, and Mr. Ulfelder stressed that what mattered more was its nearly 20 years without one.

虽然土耳其有政变的历史，但自从1997年发生最近一次政变以来，该国已经发生了很大的变化，乌菲耳德强调说，因此更重要的因素是土耳其几乎20年来没有发生政变。

Another crucial factor is what experts call elite fragmentation. If divisions open up among powerful elites — elected officials, business leaders, generals, judges and so on — their competition for resources and control can culminate in a coup.

另一个关键因素是专家们所谓的精英层破裂。如果掌握大权的精英们之间出现了分歧，包括民选官员、商界领袖、将军、法官等等 ，他们对资源和控制权的竞争可能最终以政变而告终。

There is, as yet, no sign of such a split in Turkey. The growing economy gives elites reason to maintain the status quo. And while state institutions are imperfect and rates of corruption could be better — both factors that can lead elites to compete for resources — neither is bad enough to cause a crisis.

到目前为止，还没有在土耳其精英层中出现这种分裂的迹象。经济的增长让精英们有理由维持现状。国家机构不够完善和腐败发生率较高这两个因素都可能导致精英层争夺资源，虽然土耳其的这两个因素都不够好，但都还没有坏到可能引发危机的程度。

Turkey also does not have the kind of social polarization that disaffected elites often exploit to push forward a coup. While the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, can be a polarizing figure in electoral politics, we do not see the kind of deeper divisions, with civil society groups rallying against the state, we might expect in advance of a coup.

土耳其也没有通常能让心怀不满的精英们利用来推动政变的那种社会两极分化。该国的总统雷杰普·塔伊普·埃尔多安(Recep Tayyip Erdogan)在选举政治中可以是一个让事情两极化的人物，但我们没有看到政变之前预计会出现的那种更深层次的分歧，以及民间社会团体团结起来对抗政府的情况。

Not what a coup looks like

与一般政变过程不同

Research suggests that carrying out a successful coup is a bit like baking a cake: There is a recipe, and if you skip steps or leave out ingredients, you’ll almost certainly fail.

研究揭示，制造一次成功的政变有点像烤蛋糕：都有成分表和步骤，如果你跳过一个步骤或漏掉某些成分，你几乎肯定将会失败。

Turkey’s plotters didn’t follow the recipe.

土耳其政变的策划者们没有按照标准做法行事。

Successful coups tend to be waged as “coordination games,” Naunihal Singh, a professor at the Air War College, wrote in the book “Seizing Power,” which examines why coups succeed or fail.

空军战争学院教授纳乌尼哈尔·辛格(Naunihal Singh)是《夺权》(Seizing Power)一书的作者，该书讨论了政变为什么成功或失败，他在书中写道：成功的政变通常以“协调博弈”的形式进行。

Coups work, according to this theory, when leaders convince other officers and soldiers that their success is already assured. That makes joining an act of perceived self-interest.

根据这一理论，政变成果是因为当领导者说服了其他军官和士兵，成功是有保证的。这使得加盟政变的人感觉是在为自身利益而行动。

Plotters usually accomplish this with a predictable set of steps. A huge show of force demonstrates that the weight of the military is behind the coup. A public statement by one or more high-level public officials shows that there is elite support. And the plotters usually establish tight control over the media and the flow of public information, quashing any broadcasts that would undermine the sense of inevitable and unchallenged success.

策划者通常用采取一系列可预见的步骤来做到这一点。巨大的武力展示表明，军队鼎力支持政变。一名或多名高级别政府官员的公开声明表明，政变有精英的支持。而且，策划者通常采取对媒体和公共信息流动的严密控制措施，不让任何可能有损政变必然发生，以及不可被挑战的感觉的节目播出。

Successful coups in countries like Turkey, which have strong military and political institutions, typically follow an “institutional coup” model, according to Brian Klaas, a fellow at the London School of Economics.

伦敦经济学院的研究员布莱恩·克拉斯(Brian Klaas)说，在土耳其这样的具有强大军事和政治机构的国家，成功的政变通常遵循“机构政变”的模式。

In an institutional coup, the military is unified behind the takeover and uses its full power to force top-down control over the government — as senior Turkish military leaders did in 1980. In that scenario, the coordination game is fairly simple. All of the coordination by the military elite happens before the coup even begins — and then other elites have little choice but to fall in line.

在机构政变中，军队团结一致地支持政变，并使用其全部力量对政府采取自上而下的控制，正如土耳其高级军事领导人在1980年做的那样。在这种情况下，协调博弈相当简单。军队精英的协调甚至在政变开始前就早已发生， 政变发生后，其他精英们别无选择，只能加入进来。

When the uprising represents only a faction of officers, Mr. Klaas said, the confidence game can also require quickly seizing top leaders and persuading or forcing a senior officer to publicly declare the coup’s victory, creating an appearance of success before anyone figures out what happened.

克拉斯说，当政变只代表军官中的一个派别时，信心博弈也要求能很快地抓住最高领导人，说服说强迫一名高级军官公开宣布政变成功，在人们搞清楚发生了什么之前，制造出了成功的外貌。

This time, Turkey’s dissident officers tried to take only some of these steps, and succeeded in none of them.

这次，土耳其持不同政的军官们只采取了这些步骤中的一些，而且都没成功。

Rebels deployed tanks and air power in a show of force in Istanbul and Ankara, but this was not enough to intimidate the rest of the military, which eventually overcame them. Most notably, there was no public face of the coup to demonstrate elite support or issue a clear plan.

叛军在伊斯坦布尔和安卡拉出动了坦克和空中力量来炫耀武力，但这不足以威胁到军队的其他部分，这些部分最终将叛军制服。最显著的是，政变没有一个公共形象来展示精英的支持，也没有发出明确的计划。

The insurrectionists also tried but failed to control communication with the public. President Erdogan was able to use the FaceTime smartphone app to call a TV station, a bizarre scenario that risked the appearance of weakness but also sapped plotters’ momentum and allowed him to call for the public to flood the streets in opposition.

叛乱者虽然也尝试了控制与公众的沟通，但未能成功。埃尔多安总统竟然能用智能手机应用软件FaceTime与一个电视台通话，那个场景颇为奇怪，虽然有看上去软弱的风险，但削弱了策划者的势头，让埃尔多安能够呼吁市民涌上街头抵制叛乱。

Turkish internet and cellphone service remained in operation. This allowed the government to communicate on social media and helped news of pro-government protests spread, undermining the coup’s sense of inevitability.

土耳其的互联网和手机服务没有中断。这让政府能在社交媒体上进行交流，有助于亲政府抗议活动的消息蔓延，破坏了政变无可避免的感觉。

Unanswered questions

未解的问题

Those protests — and the absence of visible pro-coup crowds — may have also been key to thwarting the plot. Successful coups will often exploit or even coordinate with pre-existing movements, using this show of popular support to rally elites.

这些抗议活动，加上没有出现看得见的亲政变人群，可能也对挫败阴谋起了关键作用。成功的政变往往会利用甚至协调已经存在的运动，用展示民众的支持来召集精英。

Turkey’s 1997 coup leaders, for example, worked with civil society groups and others who opposed the government. Egypt’s 2013 military takeover came amid mass protests against the government.

例如，土耳其1997年的政变领导人曾与民间社会团体及其他人反政府人士一起工作。埃及2013年的军事政变发生在出现大规模的反政府抗议活动的时候。

This weekend’s coup leaders appeared to lack any allies. No civil society groups or political parties issued statements in support of the insurrection, and no elites appeared to take action on its behalf.

周末的政变领导人似乎没有任何盟友。没有民间社会团体或政党发表声明支持暴动，也没有精英出来为政变做事。

That hindsight makes the coup seem so doomed only underscores some questions. It is still unclear what prompted the attempt, who led it, and why they believed they had enough chance at success to risk their lives.

这些事后的分析让政变显得如此地注定失败，更让人们想知道一些问题的答案。目前还不清楚是什么原因促使了政变的发生，是什么人领导的，为什么他们认为他们有足够的成功机会，因此冒下了生命的危险。

If history is any guide, the most straightforward explanation is simply poor planning and ineptitude.

如果以史为鉴的话，最直接的解释就是计划不佳、能力不足。